Jane is just happy to be alive. Last night we left late evening cuz Jane was sleeping happily, sharing her nurse with another baby. Got a call half-hour later, saying she was having complications.

We arrived to a dozen people working on a coded baby, Jane. She had a really slow heart rate for approx 45 minutes and intermittent CPR. It took a long time, but she came around somewhat. She’s still on the meds to keep her heart rate up. So all was clear, not great, but clear.

At 4am, Mama and I were waiting thru the night, and once again Jane was having difficulties. She couldn’t quite get her lungs working up to par, so her blood had only a fraction of oxygen needed. After another half hour, Jane pulled thru once again. This second episode last night wasn’t considered a “code”, my guess I that everyone was already in the room while it was escalating.

Now, Jane has 2 nurses of her own today.

And we still haven’t got any sleep.

From Monday night to Tuesday afternoon, Jane had 5 life-threatening emergency events, 2 of which were “codes” announced over hospital intercoms. These codes were followed seconds after by trauma specialists and support staff flooding Jane’s room to revive her. Yesterday afternoon’s code was as bad as it gets, and surviving. 

With tons of indicators, tests, x-rays, symptoms, and episodes, doctors strongly believe that Jane has an infection, which is often fatal in the ICU. 

What happens now is be as gentle as possible to Jane and hope she powers thru this infection faster than it breaks her down.

She had an “episode” every 4-5 hours. It’s been 17 hours since her last one, and there’s very little that can be done if she has another one, since she’s maxed out on the medications used to help her get thru the episodes.

“If people had 1% of the will that Jane has to live, the world would be a better place.” -The world-class doctor that told us 12 hours ago that Jane wouldn’t make it thru the night. 

Jane is taking the smallest baby steps ever, but they are baby steps, and they are going forward. Things are extremely unstable, any tiny decline in her health will be catastrophic. The support she is on is not maxed out (which can be toxic) but significantly higher than some of the staff have seen in live babies.

She did pee a tiny bit today and more thIs evening, so that’s good news that her kidneys have turned back on a little bit. Also, we did see some slight movement throughout her body. That indicates neural activity (probably no brain damage).

She’s very sick and swollen and bleeding internally, so she’s nowhere close to being healthy.

But she will not die, she will live that we may proclaim the great works of the Lord.

I noticed Jane’s lungs less and less efficient over te last several hours. They had slight decreases in oxygen saturation in the blood. The doctor obliged to an x-ray, and found that Jane has a re-collapsed lung caused by extremely high ventilator pressure going into her lungs to keep her alive the last 48 hours . The air was too much for the lung, and started leaking into her chest. He decided to get that air out immediately, so he poked a hole in her chest and was able to get some of the air out. But to get it all out, he inserted a chest tube to suck it out. Not a safe procedure for a baby that can’t clot. BUT thank God her clotting ability spiked earlier tonight, and the procedure was a breeze.

Now hopefully I can finally go collapse for a couple hours before the day gets started.

Jane Daniel Siapin

Fought the good fight for 7 weeks.

Grew tired and is now with our Lord.

Funeral Services                                                                                                          Viewing: Monday, March 12-beginning at 4pm.                                                                New Romanovsky Church, 14647 Broadway, Whittier CA 90604                                  Burial: Tuesday, March 13 at 1pm                                                                              “Slauson Cemetery”, 7201 E. Slauson Ave., City of Commerce 90040.

We have some thoughts and questions and things that we just want to put on paper (or computer) for our own benefit. For me and myself, I’ve been having tons of thoughts, and some that I just want to put on this page, for me.

I’ll be gathering them and will post something this weekend

plus we’ll add a picture of our angel Jane!

I suppose that the pain of missing Jane only gets deeper. Our home is too quiet, especially since we were soooo excited about having a house full of Jane’s noises.

It’s totally helpful that I have a really good imagination, and can still smell Jane’s scent in my mind.

Mark 11:24 plainly says, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” We asked for Jane so many times. I really am having a hard time making sense out of that, missing her…

I’ve been told several times that eventually we’ll “just move on”. That makes my blood boil. What I decided instead that makes the most sense to me is “just keep going”.

UPDATE: The second I posted this, I heard someone I respect greatly say, “there are some things in life that you will never get thru with just prayer.” Then, “God will not take away your problems immediately.” I suppose this means something to me.

So we’ve been here a little over a week in Israel, and are coming to an end in a couple days. We are in Galilee right now, having visited Peter’s house, Mt. of Beatitudes, and driven by several other historical landmarks including where Jesus fed 5000 with just a few loaves of bread and some fish (Matt 14, Mark 6, Luke 9, John 6), but this site, along with nearly all sites written about Jesus in the Bible have overly adorned monuments that take away from the history. After visiting the Garden of Gethsemane, Mount of Olives, the cross site, and the tomb of Yeshua Messiah (what the Christians here call Jesus Christ), and dozens of other biblical sites, you really have to use your imagination to get the picture.

The first few days of this trip were very difficult, so much that we changed our flights back home to make the trip shorter. It’s hard to enjoy ourselves right now, and ultimately we’d both prefer to be at home. But we’re here, and we’re gong to make the best out of it. Our original intent, which is still important, is to connect to eachother, and connect with God, and try to understand our life, if just a little bit.

We had the chance to meet up and get coffee in Jerusalem with a couple (a friend of a friend of a friend) that we didn’t know at all! They turned out to be a very nice couple, and invited us to go to worship with them, and since we weren’t doing anything else, we went. A 5 minute walk took us to the basement of a 14 story office building, and opened up to a giant underground amphitheater filled with Christians: locals, messianic Jews, immigrants, and visitors touring the Holy Land. It was definitely not what I’m used to for church, but very very neat. Everything was in English. After singing several pretty worship songs, they got ready for a sermon, but abruptly interrupted themselves to sing ONE MORE song. They sang in Hebrew directly out of Isaiah 61:1-3, with words in English to understand:

“1 “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
3 To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes.”

I don’t know why, but I immediately grew uneasy, knowing that an entire congregation of a few hundred people was singing a song to Elisabeth and me — and they didn’t even know it! Although God didn’t heal Jane, He is still letting us know He’s here?!?! I cannot fathom God’s mind.

There was a last minute guest speaker, who was from a huge church in South Carolina, and the theme of his sermon was, of course, dealing with loss! It was kinda comical how much that speaker was talking right to us and had no idea.

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so instead of me blabbering on, here are a couple pictures of breath-taking moments we’ve had here.

Wailing Wall with Dome on the Rock behind:
Wailing Wall – Remnants from the Second Temple, extremely holy for Jews
Dome on the Rock – a base rock inside is widely accepted where God first began the creation of Earth. The gold dome is real gold, pure solid gold.
The most ironic part about this is that Jews and Moslems are worshipping just feet from eachother.